"Erickson: I’ll ‘pull out my wife’s shotgun’ if someone comes to my door for the American Community Survey."

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Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted that Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) took to the conservative blog RedState to call out “blatant misinformation coming from otherwise well-meaning conservatives” about this year’s Census. “There have been calls to only partially fill out Census forms – even though that would be a direct violation of federal law,” wrote McHenry. RedState editor Erick Erickson, who recently became a CNN contributor, has joined McHenry in urging conservatives to fill out the Census because “it’s a Constitutional obligation.” But on his radio show yesterday, Erickson railed against the American Community Survey (ACS), a more-detailed supplemental survey conducted by the Census Bureau, saying that he would “pull out” his “wife’s shotgun” if someone tried to get him to fill it out:

ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.

Listen here:

According to the Census Bureau, response to the ACS “is required by law (Title 13 , United States Code, Sections 141, 193, and 221). The same law protects the confidentiality of the information.” Erickson basically repeated his comments on RedState this morning, complaining that “naturally the left is out today saying I was on the air advocating killing census workers.”

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